Three Act Tragedy - Agatha Christie [32]
‘And now,’ said Sir Charles, shutting the door of Ellis’s room behind them, having with some skill shaken off the helpful Mrs Leckie, ‘let’s see if I’m making an infernal fool of myself, or whether there’s anything in my idea.’
In Mr Satterthwaite’s opinion the former alternative was by far the more probable, but he was much too polite to say so. He sat down on the bed and watched the other.
‘Here’s our stain,’ said Sir Charles, indicating the mark with his foot. ‘Right up against the skirting board at the opposite side of the room to the writing-table. Under what circumstances would a man drop a pen just there?’
‘You can drop a pen anywhere,’ said Mr Satterthwaite.
‘You can hurl it across the room, of course,’ agreed Sir Charles. ‘But one doesn’t usually treat one’s pen like that. I don’t know, though. Fountain pens are damned annoying things. Dry up and refuse to write just when you want them to. Perhaps that’s the solution of the matter. Ellis lost his temper, said, “Damn the thing,” and hurled it across the room.’
‘I think there are plenty of explanations,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘He may have simply laid the pen on the mantelpiece and it rolled off.’
Sir Charles experimented with a pencil. He allowed it to roll off the corner of the mantelpiece. The pencil struck the ground at least a foot from the mark and rolled inwards towards the gas fire.
‘Well,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘What’s your explanation?’
‘I’m trying to find one.’
From his seat on the bed Mr Satterthwaite now witnessed a thoroughly amusing performance.
Sir Charles tried dropping the pencil from his hand as he walked in the direction of the fireplace. He tried sitting on the edge of the bed and writing there and then dropping the pencil. To get the pencil to fall on the right spot it was necessary to stand or sit jammed up against the wall in a most unconvincing attitude.
‘That’s impossible,’ said Sir Charles aloud. He stood considering the wall, the stain and the prim little gas fire.
‘If he were burning papers, now,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘But one doesn’t burn papers in a gas fire—’
Suddenly he drew in his breath.
A minute later Mr Satterthwaite was realizing Sir Charles’s profession to the full.
Charles Cartwright had become Ellis the butler. He sat writing at the writing-table. He looked furtive, every now and then he raised his eyes, shooting them shiftily from side to side. Suddenly he seemed to hear something—Mr Satterthwaite could even guess what that something was—footsteps along the passage. The man had a guilty conscience. He attached a certain meaning to those footsteps. He sprang up, the paper on which he had been writing in one hand, his pen in the other. He darted across the room to the fireplace, his head half turned, still alert—listening—afraid. He tried to shove the papers under the gas fire—in order to use both hands he cast down the pen impatiently. Sir Charles’s pencil, the ‘pen’ of the drama, fell accurately on the ink-stain…
‘Bravo,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, applauding generously.
So good had the performance been that he was left with the impression that so and only so could Ellis have acted.
‘You see?’ said Sir Charles, resuming his own personality and speaking with modest elation. ‘If the fellow heard the police or what he thought was the police coming and had to hide what he was writing—well, where could he hide it? Not in a drawer or under the mattress—if the police searched the room, that would be found at once. He hadn’t time to take up a floor board. No, behind the gas fire was the only chance.’
‘The next thing to do,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, ‘is to see whether there is anything hidden behind the gas fire.’
‘Exactly. Of course, it may have been a false alarm, and he may have got the things out again later. But we’ll hope for the best.’
‘Removing his coat and turning up his shirt sleeves, Sir Charles lay down on the floor and applied his eye